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Reed Richards (Earth-616)/Expanded History/Year Two
Go Back to Year One __TOC__ Inhumans Reed and the others later worked alongside Spider-Man once again on a mission to neutralize the energy monster known as Krakatoom. Easily defeating their foe, the five heroes decided to take make the outing an impromptu camping trip. Following this, Medusa approached Johnny to seek the Fantastic Four's assistance in evading capture by a being named Gorgon, a member of her race of Inhumans. While the others fought Gorgon, Johnny took Medusa to Dead Man's Lake near State University. Their presence there revived the Dragon Man who also attacked. In the three-way battle, Dragon Man absconded with Sue, leaving Reed and the others to be buried alive fighting Gorgon, who escaped with Medusa. Pulling themselves out of the rubble, they were quickly reunited with Sue who managed to tame the Dragon Man. Reed then placed the Dragon Man at the Baxter Building for later examination. Johnny eventually found the Inhumans when he discovered and instantly fell in love with the youthful Crystal who mistook Johnny for one of her people and brought him to the secret location where she was hiding out. There he met with her leader Black Bolt, Karnak, Triton, her sister Medusa, Gorgon and her teleporting dog Lockjaw. Recognized by Gorgon and Medusa, the Inhumans tried to stop Johnny before someone called the Seeker found them. Johnny, in turn, summoned his teammates who came to his aid. During the course of the battle, the Inhumans decided to flee before they were captured. When Reed and his teammates returned to headquarters they learned that the Seeker captured Dragon Man, as the android was mistaken for an Inhuman. The team went after Dragon Man and learned that the Seeker sought to capture the rogue Inhuman Royal Family to bring them back to his ruler, Maximus the Mad. In the ensuing battle the Dragon Man managed to escape. Easily subduing Dragon Man, the Four followed the Seeker back to the Attilan, home of the Inhumans located in the Himalayan Mountains. They had arrived just as Black Bolt had retaken the throne from Maximus. However Maximus was not ready to admit defeat, seeking to conquer the Earth for his fellow Inhumans, Maximus activated his Atmo-Gun in the hopes of wiping out the human race. However, Inhumans and humans proved to be much similar and the weapon had only a mild effect. Furious, Maximus then attempted to seal off the Great Refuge in an impenetrable "Negative Zone" barrier. Johnny refused to leave Crystal and was forced to leave by his teammates. Trapped outside the Great Refuge, Johnny vowed to find a way back to Crystal no matter what, and Reed offered to do anything he could to aid him. Galactus However, the group found themselves going from one crisis to an even larger one when the Watcher attempted to obscure the Earth from the Silver Surfer, herald of the planet-eating Galactus. While Reed tried to study Galactus and his herald, Johnny and Ben tried to clash with the Surfer, but were too late to stop him from summoning his master to Earth. During this crisis, Reed and Sue were once again abducted by their future selves to participate in their wedding anniversary, and brought back as usual. Further attacks directly at Galactus also were met with failure. The Watcher then approached Johnny giving him the power to travel great distances via space-time distortion. Johnny was then led to Galactus' Worldship to obtain the one weapon that could stop Galactus, while Reed and the others faced off against Galactus and his cyborg guardian the Punisher. Johnny returned to Earth just as the Silver Surfer joined the Fantastic Four in trying to stop his master. Johnny then turned over the Ultimate Nullifier to Reed who then used it to bluff Galactus into surrendering. Galactus agreed to not consume the Earth, and left but not before exiling the Surfer to Earth. The Negative Zone With Galactus defeated, Reed began focusing his time on developing devices to deal with cosmic level threats. He also began working on a portal to an anti-matter dimension he originally called Sub-Space (later referred to as the Negative Zone). It was around this time that Ben went through one of his depressions over his mutation and was manipulated by a scientist named Ricardo Jones into transferring his powers to Ricardo. Posing as the Thing, Ricardo sought to kill Reed to steal his scientific achievements. When the now human Ben Grimm tried to warn Reed and Sue of the impostor in their midst, Reed did not believe Ben and kicked him out of his lab. However, Ricardo realized how brave and selfless a man Reed Richards was when he went into the Negative Zone alone. When Reed was at risk of being destroyed in the anti-mater barrier in the center of the Negative Zone, Ricardo selflessly sacrificed his life to save Reed and get him home. With Ricardo's death, Ben reverted to his mutated state and returned to the group. Around this time, the cosmic being known as the Collector had gathered a collection of many of Earth's monsters including Grattu, Tragg, Taboo, Vandoom, Gargantus and Droom among others. This led to a clash between the Collector and the Mole Man that saw all the monsters in the Collector's collection released upon New York. Reed enlisted the aid of the Thing, the Hulk, Giant-Man and the X-Men's Beast to round up the creatures. Meanwhile, Reed built a portable Negative Zone generator which he then used to banish the monsters into the Negative Zone. The Black Panther Reed later accepted an invitation for the Fantastic Four to visit the reclusive nation of Wakanda by the Black Panther, the group also brought with them Johnny's new college roommate Wyatt Wingfoot. The Panther combated with the Fantastic Four to test their abilities and the Four ultimately won, winning the friendship of the Panther. Reed and the others next helped the Black Panther defend his nation's supply of rare Vibranium metal from Ulysses Klaw who was responsible for murdering the Black Panther's father. While the FF fought against Klaw's solid sound constructs, the Black Panther fought Klaw to the seeming death. Following the battle, Reed was too engrossed in his work to pay attention to his wife. In turn, Sue almost had a romantic tryst with the Black Panther, but the two were able to control each other. Sue and T'Challa have kept this a secret from Reed to this day. After a baseball game and receiving gifts from the Black Panther, Reed, Sue and Ben returned to New York while Johnny and Wyatt went off to find a way to free Crystal and the Inhumans from the Great Refuge. Back in New York, the Thing got into a fight with the Silver Surfer, whom Ben assumed was trying to steal Alicia away from him. Reed and Sue eventually intervened, convincing Ben that the Surfer posted no threat to his relationship. Soon Reed and the others were reunited with Johnny and Wyatt who were teleported back to New York by Lockjaw on their quest to free the Inhumans. During this time the Mad Thinker and his sentient computer Quasimodo recovered the body of the original android Human Torch, a hero from the 1940s and revived him. The Thinker then sent the original Human Torch after his successor. Reed and the others came to Johnny's aid and convinced the android Torch to join them in stopping the Thinker. However in the final battle, Quasimodo seemingly slew the android and the Mad Thinker successfully escaped. Wyatt and Johnny then left to resume their quest, leaving Reed and Sue to intern the original Torch's body in the Thinker's lab. The original Human Torch survived however. As revealed in , Immortus created a chronal duplicate of the Torch. One duplicate was rebuilt into the Vision by the robot Ultron as revealed in while he other was buried in a cemetery only to be revived years later in . The Baxter Building was later attacked by Ulysses Klaw, who had survived his last battle by converting himself into a being of solid sound. He trapped Ben and Reed in the Negative Zone chamber and then terrorized Sue. However, Reed ultimately defeated Klaw when the Black Panther sent him Vibranium knuckles which he used to beat Klaw into submission. Cosmic Doom Reed, Sue, and Ben were next called to State Prison where they found the Sandman trying to break the Wizard out of prison. While they thwarted the prison break, the Sandman managed to escape. They then returned to base where the Sandman ambushed them, and before they could stop him escaped with a bunch of equipment stolen from Reed's lab. Also at that time, unknown to them, Dr. Doom tricked the Silver Surfer into visiting his kingdom then used his scientific equipment to steal the Surfer's Power Cosmic for himself. Dr. Doom then attacked the Fantastic Four, and even the return of the Human Torch did little to stand against the cosmic powered Dr. Doom. Ultimately Reed had to admit defeat, and Doom decided to spare their lives for a while longer. After warning the world governments about Doom, Reed was granted permission from the United Nations to deal with Doom first. Recalling how the Surfer was exiled on Earth, Richards began working on a prototype of an Anti-Cosmic Flying Wing to defeat Doom. Reed led the Fantastic Four into battle while the US army and Stark Industries worked on a larger version of the Flying Wing. Reed distracted Doom long enough for the Flying Wing to be completed. The device then lured Doom out of Earth's atmosphere and into the barrier that Galactus put in place to keep the Surfer on Earth. The resulting impact seemingly slew Doom and the Power Cosmic was reverted back to the Silver Surfer. Dr. Doom survived as revealed in . Blastaar When returning home the FF were attacked by the Sandman once again, who used the devices stolen from Reed to construct a new high-tech costume. During the fight, Reed's portal to the Negative Zone was accidentally opened and while the Sandman managed to escape, Reed was sucked into it and was at the risk of death as he drifted uncontrollably into a nullification zone. It was during this tragic turn of events that Crystal revealed that she and her people escaped the Great Refuge. Understanding the Fantastic Four's plight, Crystal obtain the aid of Triton, who used his swimming prowess to rescue Reed from the Negative Zone. However they were followed back to Earth by an exiled warlord named Blastaar. Blastaar came across the Sandman and the two teamed up to attack New York City. While most of the team were busy fighting the pair, Reed developed a helmet that would subdue Blastaar. While the Sandman managed to escape capture once again, Blastaar faired worse when Reed succeeded in placing the helmet on his head knocking him out. Back at the Baxter Building Reed and his team encountered future mercenary Deadpool and his sidekick Hydra Bob who had been travelling through history trying to get back to their own era time. Reed put in his scientific know-how to try and help Deadpool and Bob return to their own time, a task made harder due to temporal flashes that erased their short-term memory in order to maintain histories proper order. Reed and his teammates succeed in returning Deadpool to his own time with assistance of his a future incarnation of the Fantastic Four who was under the leadership of the Black Panther during that future time. Reed's memory of this encounter was erased thanks to the temporal flashes that preserved the timeline. Per the Sliding Timescale, Deadpool came from roughly 10 years in the future from this point. Cable & Deadpool #46 was published in 2007 (Year Twelve) and Fantastic Four #63 in 1967 (Year Two): 12 -2 = 10. The Kree When Reed and Sue decided to take a vacation with Ben on a remote island where they were attacked by the Kree Sentry left on Earth millions of years ago, Johnny rushed to their aid and helped destroy the robot. This Kree Sentry was originally left behind to monitor the Inhumans thousands of years ago, as seen in Later, while Reed was working in his lab, he noted a news report about Spider-Man and warned Ben not to taunt Johnny with it. In the Thing shows off his new Blackberry cell phone. The technology Ben uses here should be considered a topical reference per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616. This earned the ire the Kree's leader the Supreme Intelligence who sent his agent Ronan the Accuser to punish the Fantastic Four. Reed and Sue were teleported away while on a date, but they and their teammates succeeded in defeating Ronan who fled back to the Kree galaxy. The Enclave It was soon discovered that Alicia had gone missing during their battle with Ronan and Reed went right to work to find clues to her whereabouts. Developing a heat image scanner, Reed was able to reconstruct a scene in Alicia's apartment where she was lured away by a Jerome Hamilton a scientist who worked for the secret Enclave organization. Reed duplicated a bracelet that Hamilton wore to teleport Alicia to the Enclave's scientific laboratories called the Beehive. There they learned the scientists in the Enclave were attempting to create new life and kidnapped Ben's girlfriend Alicia so she could sculpt their creation, known only as Him, as any attempts to look at it was repelled by Himself. With the Enclave seeking to destroy Him, the Fantastic Four defended the creature and Alicia until Him could emerge from his cocoon. When Him succeeded, Reed and the others returned home, and Him destroyed the Beehive and left for the stars. Sue's Pregnancy Not long after their return from the Enclave, Sue collapsed and Reed's examinations found that Sue was pregnant with his child, much to everyone's delight. Soon after this announcement, Johnny and Ben were dispatched to Panther Island to assist the Inhuman Royal Family and the Black Panther in trying to stop the Psycho-Man a villain from the Microverse attempting to take control of Earth. With Ben once more depressed over his mutation, Reed enlisted the aid of famous chemist Dr. Santini to try and cure Ben. However unknown to them at the time, Santini was replaced by the Mad Thinker who altered the experiment so that it turned Ben evil instead of curing him. While Reed and the others fought Ben, the Mad Thinker had free reign of all of Reed's experiments. Unwilling to destroy their teammate, the Fantastic Four were easily defeated by the Thing in the first bout. When Reed deduced that the Mad Thinker was involved, the team in stormed the Thinker's secret lab rescuing Santini and apprehending the Thinker. Returning to base they were attacked by the Thing once again but Reed managed to blast him with Menta-Wave Unit restoring Ben to normal just as the Mad Thinker's newest android arrived to finish them off. Johnny, Ben, and Reed battled the android, ultimately dumping it into the Negative Zone, however, the experienced proved to Reed that he and his pregnant wife could not be safe at the Baxter Building and he resolved to leave the group. After this moment Reed and Sue were taken to the future once again for the anniversary party. Return of the Silver Surfer While Reed and Sue headed off to California, Johnny, Ben and Crystal were left to determine the fate of the group when they were suddenly approached by the Watcher. The Watcher warned that the Silver Surfer was going to menace the world in a misguided attempt to unify humanity. Johnny and Ben were joined by Reed who was teleported back to New York by the Watcher in order to help stop the Surfer. They managed to convince the alien the folly of his plans. After this episode Reed and Sue decided to remain at the Baxter building. Having survived his last encounter with the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom tricked the Fantastic Four into thinking that the heroic Daredevil had been possessed by Doom himself, putting the team on alert. Thinking that their headquarters was under attack the Fantastic Four attacked Daredevil. Daredevil then enlisted the aid of Spider-Man and Thor to try to convince the Fantastic Four that they had been duped. Reed fought with Daredevil thinking him to be Dr. Doom in Daredevil's body until Sue arrived at headquarters and confirmed Daredevil's claims that they were tricked by Doom. Soon the Surfer sought out the Fantastic Four for help when Galactus was on his way to force the Surfer to be his herald once more. Reed and the others stood up against Galactus' Punisher cyborg while the Silver Surfer -- unknown to them -- fled into the Microverse. Galactus soon called off his enforcer and demanded that the Fantastic Four find the Surfer or he would have no choice but to consume Earth. The Fantastic Four initially refused and so Galactus created cosmic powered duplicates of Reed, Ben, and Johnny to attack the heroes. They ultimately defeated these constructs but had no choice but to find the Surfer. Reed deduced that the Surfer fled to the Microverse and they followed after him in Reed's newly constructed Reducta-Craft. There they clashed with the Surfer and convinced him to help Galactus. The Surfer did help Galactus in finding the energy he needed in an uninhabited solar system but found himself exiled on Earth to be used by Galactus again in the future. Meanwhile, Reed and the others were attacked by the Psycho-Man, whom they defeated in battle and convinced to let them go to defend the Earth from Galactus. However when they returned to Earth they were surprised to find that Galactus had been defeated in their absence. Complications Back on Earth, Reed devised a means of restoring Ben back to his human form, however, he cautioned that should Ben change back into the Thing the transformation would be permanent. Soon after they were attacked by the recently escaped Wizard, who nearly defeated the team with his new "Wonder Gloves", but was defeated, making Ben question his decision to renounce his powers. With Sue in the hospital expecting to give birth Reed was called in by the doctors who showed him troubling charts: the cosmic rays that gave Sue her powers were a risk to her and their unborn child and could prove to be fatal to them during childbirth. Reed decided to hide this fact from his wife but she sensed there was something wrong. Meanwhile, Ben was forced to change back into the Thing using the Wizard's Wonder Gloves when he and Alicia were attacked by the Mad Thinker's Android Man and glumly rejoined the team. Reed returned to the Baxter building where he learned that Johnny got a letter asking for Johnny's help on the land owned by his people the Keewazi tribe. There Reed and his teammates learned that the Red Star Oil Company had constructed a massive robot based on the Keewazi god Tomazooma in an effort to try to force the Keewazi off their oil-rich land. The Fantastic Four helped Keewazi leader Silent Fox driving away the communist-backed corporation. Returning home, Reed revealed to Ben and Johnny that the cosmic rays that powered Sue were complicating her pregnancy threatening to kill both Sue and her unborn child. Having discovered that a power source in the Negative Zone could save his wife Reed was determined to go alone but Johnny and Ben refused to let do so and accompanied him. Traveling into the Negative Zone together they were captured by the ruler of the Negative Zone, a brutal Darwinist known as Annihilus. Learning that Annihilus' Cosmic Control Rod was the energy source Reed needed the trio stole it and attempted to flee the Negative Zone. However, caught between Annihilus and the Annihilation Zone Reed compromised with the strange creature: he siphoned the energy he needed and returned the Rod to Annihilus in exchange for safe passage back to Earth. Rushing to the hospital, Reed succeeded in saving Sue's life, who gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Fantastic Five With Sue unable to play an active role on the team while recovering from her pregnancy, Crystal petitioned to join the team. Both Johnny and Reed were both apprehensive about the idea but she proved herself during a rematch with the Wizard who attacked them with new and improved Wonder Gloves. Although the Wizard managed to escape, Crystal had convinced both Reed and Johnny that she was the perfect replacement for Sue while she was away from the group. Shortly thereafter, Reed and his teammates were invited to a wedding party being thrown at Avengers Mansion for Yellowjacket and the Wasp. Needing royal approval from the Inhumans, Crystal insisted on returning to the Great Refuge, but upon summoning Lockjaw she was captured by the Alpha Primitives a slave class that carried out menial tasks for the Inhumans. Reed and the rest of the team traveled to the Hidden Land where they were captured and learned that Maximus had once again taken over the Inhuman throne and sought to take over the world with a Hypno-Gun. Black Bolt managed to free himself and the Royal Family and they, in turn, freed the Fantastic Four. Working together, the two groups destroyed Maximus' Hypno-Gun, but Maximus and his minions managed to flee into space. Trapped in Latveria On their way back to America, Reed and the others were stopped by Nick Fury and his agents of SHIELD who requested the Fantastic Four's help investigating reports that Dr. Doom was supplying robots to a communist nation in Eastern Europe. Traveling there the group was easily captured and made prisoner in Dr. Doom's homeland of Latveria, unable to leave due to defenses around the nation. Doom intended the Fantastic Four to live there until the day they died. With the people of Latveria revolting against Doom's rule, Doom had the Fantastic Four knocked out and brainwashed into thinking they had lost their powers before ordering all the dissidents and his hated foes eliminated. Overcoming their brainwashing in the ensuing battle, Reed, and the others succeeded in destroying Doom's robots. Before taking the fight to Doom the group was joined by Sue who had come searching for them. Splitting up, Johnny, Reed and Ben fought with Doom's minion Gustav Hauptmann a Nazi war criminal. However when Hauptmann almost destroyed some of Doom's priceless artwork the monarch grew tired of the match and slew Hauptmann. Then, much to everyone's surprise, he allowed the Fantastic Four to leave his nation unscathed. How Gustav Hauptman could appear to be in his middle age in the Modern Age when considering the Sliding Timescale is unexplained at this time. Not long after returning to the Baxter Building, their headquarters was broken into and Reed's Space Scrambler device was stolen. Unknown to anyone at the time the thief was the Silver Surfer who was attempting to use the device in yet another failed attempt to breach the barrier trapping him on Earth. Kral IV Reed and Sue son began seeking out a suitable home where they could raise their child. They went out of their way to purchase bizarre metallic home that just appeared one day, unaware that this was a trap laid out by the Mole Man to blind the entire team and defeat them in battle before turning this device on the entire world. Without their sense of sight, Reed and the others were outmatched by the Mole Man. During the battle, a stray shot seriously wounded Reed and destroyed the device making them blind. Furious, Johnny savagely went after the Mole Man and subdued him before he could activate the master device that would blind the entire planet. The Mole Man then managed to escape then set the house to self-destruct forcing the Fantastic Four to abandon the home. When Reed arrived back at the Baxter Building he learned that Ben, who left prior to the house blowing up, had gone missing. After fruitless hours scouring the city searching for him Reed found evidence that Ben had been captured by the Skrulls. Reed tracked Ben to the planet Kral IV, he then traveled there with Johnny and Crystal. On Kral IV, Reed and the others found that the planet was run by the Slave-Master and a series of Skrulls who were inspired by American gangster culture of the 1930s. The "mobsters" who ruled this planet captured aliens from all over the universe to pit them in gladiatorial battles. Reed and the others rescued Ben. They then assisted an alien named Torgo in staging an uprising among the slaves, topping the Slave-Master's empire. With the Skrull mobs defeated, Johnny and his teammates returned to Earth. During this period Reed also developed what he hoped was a cure for the Hulk and sent out a bulletin to the media. As Reed had hoped, Bruce Banner came to New York seeking the cure. However, a transformation into the Hulk led to a battle between the Fantastic Four and the Hulk. Incapacitating the Hulk Reed subjected the Hulk to his invention but instead of curing Banner it made it so Banner could change into the Hulk at will while still retaining his intelligence. Although this proved to be short-lived. The Hulk's control and intelligence lasts until . Later, Reed was one of the many altruistic humans that were mind linked by the X-Men's Professor X to fight off an invasion from the Z'Nox. =Further Reading= * Mister Fantastic: Year Three * Return to Expanded History Main Page =Continuity Notes= =References=